Short answer: do not re-sit the papers. A passage you have seen before gives you an inflated score and no new information, because you are recognising answers rather than finding them.
What you need instead is unlimited fresh material for the two or three question types still costing you marks — and one unseen paper held back as a final rehearsal.
Running out of official tests is a good problem, and it usually reveals something about how the last few months were spent: if you sat every paper and your band did not move, you were measuring repeatedly rather than drilling.
Why re-sitting a paper does not work
Reading comprehension and recognition memory are different faculties, and the second one is very strong. Sit a passage a second time and you will remember that the answer to question 7 was somewhere in paragraph D and that "NOT GIVEN" appeared twice, without remembering why.
Your score rises, your skill does not, and you now have a number you cannot act on.
It is worse than useless, in fact, because it produces false confidence in the week when accurate self-assessment matters most.
Step 1: diagnose what you already have
You have sat perhaps forty papers' worth of material. That is a large dataset and almost nobody uses it. Go back through your marked papers and sort every wrong answer by question type, not by test number or passage.
| Pattern | What it means | What to drill |
|---|---|---|
| Losses concentrated in matching headings | You are reading for detail where the task needs paragraph-level meaning | Headings only, until skimming for main idea is automatic |
| Losses in True/False/Not Given | You are inferring where the task forbids it | T/F/NG only, with the NOT GIVEN boundary as the focus |
| Losses spread thinly across every type | Timing, not technique — you ran out of time on passage 3 | Whole timed papers with a per-passage clock, not more technique |
| Losses in completion tasks | Word limits and spelling, which are mechanical | Completion tasks with a strict word-limit check on every answer |
| Passage 3 collapses, 1 and 2 fine | Stamina and abstract argument, not vocabulary | Hardest passages in isolation, one at a time |
Two or three types normally account for most of the loss. That list is your syllabus for the remaining time, and it is more valuable than any new book.
Step 2: get unlimited repetitions of those types
Here is the arithmetic problem the books cannot solve. If matching headings is your weakness, a Cambridge volume gives you four or five instances of it. Making a method automatic takes considerably more than five repetitions, and every instance you use is spent permanently.
So the requirement is fresh material, by question type, on demand. Options, honestly compared:
| Source | Strength | Limitation |
|---|---|---|
| Other publishers' IELTS books | More whole papers; some are well made | Format fidelity varies, and you are back to measuring rather than drilling |
| Official free familiarisation tests | Free, and the only way to rehearse the computer-delivered interface | Very few of them; a rehearsal, not a practice programme |
| Free online question banks | Volume, at no cost | Quality is uneven and answer keys are sometimes wrong, which teaches the wrong lesson |
| Generated practice by question type | Unlimited repetitions of exactly the type you are failing, with the trap named | Generated passages, not past papers — use official material for your final measurement |
Our own answer to this is the last row, so treat it as an interested one: practice by question type generates fresh Cambridge-style passages for any of the eleven types and explains the specific trap behind each wrong answer, which is the step the official keys leave out.
The free reading practice tests are the whole-paper version, each with a key that names the trap per question.
Step 3: keep one paper in reserve
If you still have an unseen volume or even one unseen test, stop and save it. You want one clean, unseen, fully timed paper about a week before your exam, because that is the only honest measurement you will get.
Spending your last unseen test in month two leaves you guessing in the week that matters.
If you have already used everything, the substitute is a full timed paper you have not seen from any credible source, sat under real conditions in one sitting.
Step 4: check you are solving the right problem
One last thing worth checking before you buy anything. Convert your recent raw scores properly and look at where Reading actually sits relative to your other three skills — the band calculator shows how the four combine and which single skill is the cheapest half band to buy back.
Candidates who have finished every Cambridge Reading test are often no longer limited by Reading. If Writing is a band and a half behind, more reading practice is the wrong purchase however diligent it feels, and the Writing Checker or Band 8 Trainer is where the next band actually is.
For how to use the official volumes properly in the first place, see the Cambridge IELTS books guide.